1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to heating apparatuses and particularly to radiant heating apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cold, ice, snow, and frost are undesirable in many fields. For example, when concrete is poured, the ground must be thawed and free of snow and frost. In agriculture, planters often plant seeds, bulbs, and the like before the last freeze of the year. Roofs of buildings accumulate snow and ice that must be removed to preserve the integrity of the structure and for other reasons. Homes and other buildings require heating for the comfort and health of occupants. In such examples, it is useful to keep the buildings, roofs, concrete, soil, and other surfaces generally warm and free of ice, snow, and frost.
Standard methods for heating and for removing and preventing ice, snow, and frost include forcing heated air through the rooms or heated water on the surfaces to be heated. Such methods are often expensive, time consuming, inefficient, and otherwise problematic.
Additionally, many situations exist in which a volume of space needs to be heated but existing methods and apparatuses for doing so are problematic. For example, normal ways of heating a residence include forced-air systems or radiant heat systems using heated water or oil that flows through pipes through the walls, floors, or a heating register of a room, with commensurate complications of dryness, moisture, water pipe breakage, and other problems.
Currently, few conventional solutions exist that use electricity to produce and conduct heat. Traditionally, this was due to limited circuit designs, and inefficient management of the electrically produced heat. Traditional solutions were unable to produce sufficient heat over a sufficient surface area to be practical. The traditional solutions that did exist required special electrical circuits with higher voltages that were protected by higher rated breakers than those ordinarily used in a commercial or residential building. These higher voltages and currents are often unavailable at either residential or commercial sites. Thus, using conventional standard circuits, conventional solutions are unable to produce sufficient heat over a sufficiently large surface area to be practical. In addition, specialized electrical circuits for the higher voltages increased the costs of installing such systems and the energy bills for operating the systems.
What is needed is a radiant heating apparatus that operates using electricity from standard residential and commercial power supplies, is cost effective, simple to install, and customizable to provide heated coverage for variable size surfaces efficiently and cost effectively. Thus, an apparatus is needed which overcomes the complexity and limitations of existing systems and provides the benefits of heating without the associated problems.